The kinds of foods that trash your LDL predate the FDA and the United States.

People paying $2.99 for a flash game on their phone have finally figured out that you can play them for free on the interwebs. News at 11.

Erm... so a minimum wage employee has to risk their lives so you an feel better about "something" being done. I bet you also wonder why the modern world is fucked.

Also clue by four: if shops could stop shoplifting tomorrow they'd not lower prices, they'd just increase their profit margins. Hence if there is anyone to blame it is really the stores themselves. There's a load of changes they can make to store layouts to minimise theft and shrinkage, however they wont as it will reduce the purchase of impulse items significantly. Until shops are willing to do that, they're just complaining that someone else hasn't fixed their problem and protected their profits.

The local ASDA (UK supermarket) recently installed barriers that only open one way at the entrance to the store but still keeps impulse items outside the barriers... which makes them about as useful as a chocolate teapot. The barriers are waist height so they won't stop anyone and if you want to leave the shop you can just walk through the dozen or so unmanned checkouts. I suppose it will deter the casual theif... sometimes.

Conspiracy implies a degree of secrecy.

Won't happen, at least not with my books.

There is a reason writing the last one took two years. Many of its passages have very carefully considered wordings. Intentional ambiguities. Alliterations. Words chosen because the other term for the same thing is too similar to another thing that occurs in the same paragraph. Names picked with intention, by the sound of them (harsher or softer, for example).

I've used AI extensively in many fields. Including translations. It's pretty good for normal texts like newspaper articles or Wikipedia or something. But for a book, where the emotional impact of things matter, where you can't just substitute one words for a synonym and get the same effect - no, I don't think so.

This is one area where even I with a general positive attitude to AI want a human translator with whom I can discuss these things and where I can get a feeling of "did she understand this part of the book and why it's described this way?".

Glad to see I'm not the only one who noticed that over time Amazon's search feature has enshitified. If that's the correct verb. It used to be fairly good. These days, nah, unless I'm looking for a book or other product from Amazon directly, as a search for the marketplace it's crap.

And since it used to be better, something must be responsible for that. Greed, most likely.

Not 99% but definitely some of the most useful ones. And yes, stack traces are one of the things that only Linux users send you without an explicit request.

And the advantage of debugging a (this specific exception) error in (this specific file) on (that specific line) over a "hey, the game crashed when I jumped out of the car" bug report cannot be overstated.

Good sir, this is clearly a desperate cry for help... This "national centre for gaming disorders" seems desperate for people to learn that they... erm... exist.

More Americans seem to be aware of Milton Keynes than people who have heard about this place, probably because Britain's most unremarkable town has more functions.

Fun fact: there are over 140 roundabouts in Milton Keynes, giving you ample opportunity to turn around and get the hell out of Milton Keynes.

The irony of that I sense will be lost on you.

Crocodile Dundee were American films. The stories were American, the language used was American (they're called prawns, only Seppo's call them "shrimp" and no-one in Oz BBQs them), even Paul Hogan had left Australia (albeit for the UK). This is exactly the kind of thing that these kinds of legislation are meant to stymie.

If you'd like to watch a few Australian films, I'd recommend "The Castle" as a light hearted drama, "Chopper" as a more gritty comedy based on Melbourne gangland figure Mark Brandon "Chopper" Reid (both films feature Eric Bana) and "Bad Eggs", Australia tends to do comedy well. Although I suspect a cultural references will go straight over the heads of many.

As a former Australian, the culture is being subsumed by the worst parts of American culture.

Long gone are the days of the knockabout larrikin culture of my youth (we're only talking 20 odd years ago too) which has been replaced with American style selfishness and ignorance, a grab, snatch and take followed with "I got mine, fuck you". If you aren't old enough to have 20 houses, there's nothing left for you to grab, snatch or take either. The old "laid back" Australian image is just a myth these days, "She'll be right" has been replaced with "I'm alright Jack".

As for this particular move, the old system is dying, by that I mean broadcast TV and it was broadcast TV that used to pay for all the local production. This is again Americanism creeping in with a little help from the British, TV is little more than cheap reality TV any more. If it isn't American style reality, they'll steal things from the British (Strictly Come Dancing, Bake Off, Love Island (which was only named such because Chlamydia Peninsula was already trademarked)). There is little in the way of local drama and local comedy produced these days. I'd hazard a guess that is the kind of thing this move is trying to stymie.

I've long since moved away and found something in the UK I realised Australia lost, it could still laugh at itself, it wasn't taking itself too seriously and sadly that seems to be dying out in the UK now.

crystal in your hand all turning black...

I largely agree, however one minor point of order is that banks rarely make interest off people who don't repay their debts. So someone who is at risk of defaulting is going to cost, hence organisations that give easy credit to anyone like Klarna are in dire straights. Whoda thunk you'd lose money by lending it to people who wouldn't pay it back.

What they want are people using credit (preferably exclusively) but paying it off every month, hence people who have credit cards but don't use them are often called "deadbeats".

I'm just glad I don't live in a country that judges me on a credit score. It seems pretty Orwellian to me. Lenders have to make their own decisions when someone applies for credit which means the lender must accept the risks (the likes of Experian have tried to set up credit score like systems here and failed as no one would buy them).

Yet.

They're not going full Stazi on white people, yet.

It'll happen, first they'll say it's just the "Lib'rals" and the ignorant sleepwalkers will just keep watching Fox News and swallowing their State Approved bullshit... however it'll start applying to them too and by that point, it'll be too late as "no one was left to speak out for them".

People who support the mechanism of a police state, especially out of bigotry, rarely seem to understand that the same mechanisms will be turned against them in due course. Well, not until it's too late.

At least they still managed to break my Taylor guitar.

Spain doesn't really benefit from DST because it's highest latitude is still so low that there isn't a huge difference in the hours of daylight between summer and winter.

The UK has an 8 hour difference between midsummer and midwinter. Yes, July has 8 more hours of sunshine than December. If you stuck with permanent summer time, the sun wouldn't rise until 8:30 and would still be dark by 5 in midwinter. If you stuck with permanent GMT, in midsummer the sun would be up around 03:30. Without DST, a whole bunch of seasonal issues (in particular S.A.D.) will get a whole lot worse.

Most clocks adjust themselves these days, so there isn't even that excuse any more.